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The three certificates I ordered from the GRO last week have arrived, with mixed results. The first one I will deal with is the birth certificate of Walter Henry BOXALL.

At last I now can put Walter Henry BOXALL in the correct place in my family tree, he was my first cousin twice removed, the son of Alice Ruth BOXALL, who was one of the sisters of my great-grandmother Lilian Mary BOXALL.

Walter Henry was born at 10 Arthur Street, Caerleon, Monmouthshire, Wales, on the 27th May 1897. His mother is recorded as domestic servant at the same address, but there are no details for his father.

To be honest I am not too worried about the identity of his father at the moment, and I doubt I will ever get around to doing any further research into his father, at least I have his mother’s name which is enough to fit him into my tree.

Of course it is quite interesting to speculate about why Alice was in Caerleon. Had she really found a job there or had she been sent away to have her child? Was she staying with relatives? Did she get pregnant before she moved to Wales? It would be interesting to know, but they are all questions that are going to be hard (if not impossible) to answer.

I already knew what happened to Walter Henry, he was killed during the First World War (I still need to write a summary of his army service), but I had not done any work on his mother, so that was my next step.

It turned out that she married Walter William WEST in West Dean, Sussex in March 1901, he was a platelayer on the railway (which really pleases me, another railwayman in my family tree) and they had at least five children.

Both Walter Henry and Alice Ruth were back in West Dean for the 1901 census, but living apart. Walter Henry was with his grandparents and Alice Ruth with her new husband. I guess this indicates that Walter William WEST was not the father of Walter Henry BOXALL.

So this birth certificate has done what I hoped, it has found a home for another orphan on my tree, and as an added bonus it has encouraged me to find out more about my 2x great-aunt Alice Ruth BOXALL.

One Response to “Walter Henry BOXALL’s birth certificate”

My name is Yvonne my maiden name was Boxall i live in Shropshire and my father was Frederick Boxall and son of William John Boxall who was a brother to your great grandmother Lillian.
I have Alice Ruth born in 1878 in West Dean and died in 1968 aged 90 and buried in West Dean she was baptised on 1st Sept 1878 she was 23 when she married William Walter West as has i know they had 9 children James born 1901/ Beatrice born 15Aug 1902 (who married Charles Hotson ) Kathleen 1905-2000/ Gladys Mary 1907/ Frederick born 4 Dec 1909/ Daisy 1911/ Violet born 7th July 1911/ Edward born 2 Dec 1915 Wilfred 1917